Girl on the Net

I know some people fixate on the lovers their partners have known before they got together, but I don’t think that’s my bag. When your partner gets with you, you’re the best one, obviously: all their exes fade into the shadows because your own star is shining so brightly. I prefer to fixate on the lovers who come afterwards. Those better, cooler women with filthy sex ideas and amazing tits and brand, shiny, sparkling new stories. Luckily for me, though, this isn’t a problem, because shortly after I break up with someone a lovely cosy limousine arrives to pick him up and he goes to live with all my other ex-boyfriends in a beautiful pasture far, far away.

It’s lovely, this pasture, I promise. It comes with a huge mansion where each ex-boyfriend can have his own suite: bedroom with four-poster bed, big bathroom with a hot tub, balconies on which they can smoke joints and masturbate wistfully about the happy times they spent with me. The pasture itself? Filled with Playstations as far as the eye can see.

They’re very happy here, I promise. They get on well, my ex-boyfriends. They spend their days frolicking in the pasture on the Playstations, and their evenings sharing delicious dinners and fine whiskies while reminiscing about epic sex they had with me. No women ever visit this distant pasture, of course. Especially not nice ones with great hair and lovely bums and tattoos in interesting places. But honestly even if they did the ex-boyfriends would probably just turn them away mournfully, lamenting that no other woman could ever compete with me, so what’s the point? Might as well just fuck each other in the hot tubs.

They do fuck each other quite a lot. Especially numbers 26 and 8 and, incidentally, if you guys ever do choose to engage in some sweaty fuckplay, I would bet my life savings on which of you would call the other one ‘Sir.’

Where ex-boyfriends actually go

I am joking, of course. There is no pasture. No mansion, no crowd of adoring ex-boyfriends, and saddest of all not a single hot tub blow job. Instead, my ex-boyfriends have all gone on to shag other women after me. To love other women after me. To let other women rifle through their fridges and wear their hoodies and develop in-jokes that I will never understand. Frankly, there should be a campaign to put a stop to this absolute – let’s call it out for what it is here – audacity.

Thank God these women are tedious and awful, or I’d have a real problem on my hands. But luckily, my ex-boyfriends’ new partners tend to be rubbish in some significant way. I know this because I used to have Facebook. They’re incredibly boring. They just… sort of… hang around, going on walks and doing lockdown crafts and having families and only rarely getting stuck in to some hellraising. Even when they do post something fun it’s usually just ‘cheeky margarita? Don’t mind if I do!’ in a manner that tells you they really don’t get out much. You never see them doing the things I used to do with my exes, like having threesomes with hot mates or swallowing their entire cock while they try not to die in Halo 4.

OK… maybe my opinion of the Women After Me is influenced ever so slightly by the Facebook guidelines. And my own wishful thinking.

The point is: I’d be very grateful if all my ex-boyfriends could please ensure that the lives they live after our break-ups are ones which are happy but dull. Guys please try to be content, but in a vaguely bland, pedestrian way. You can have plenty of wholesome fun and absolutely no strife or trauma, because I love the vast majority of you and I’d like you to be well. But… you know… no sex parties. Or falling in love. Or going traveling in some kickass place that I’d really have loved to visit with you. When we break up, if you don’t fancy the pasture, please help yourself to a steady, easy, well-paid job, a family if you so desire, and a large dollop of deep regret that you ever let me slip through your fingers.

What I would actually like to happen to my ex-boyfriends

God this is so fucking hard. So hard. Because although there genuinely is a large, warm, fuzzy part of me that is delighted to learn my ex is having fun with someone who is not me, there is another part that is howling with self-pity and neuroses, plus a tiny dash of good old-fashioned heartbreak.

I do not want you to love people other than me, because everything you love about them will be something I am lacking. Every minute of fun you have with them will be something with which I did not or could not provide you. Every burst of new relationship energy is a jolt of joy I could never have given you.

And I feel old and sad and tired and unloved. Inadequate and weak and ugly and afraid.

It’s beyond ridiculous, obviously. But I am human and ‘ridiculous’ is our core defining trait.

If anyone were to ask me my actual thoughts aloud, I would give them a much better answer. I would tell them that while I’m fragile and a bit sad about the news, the headline here is that I’m pleased for him. I do not want to be this guy’s girlfriend any more, obviously, so the best thing for each of us is that we both go on to live awesome lives, so we’ll have lots of cool shit to catch up on when we go for beers in a few months’ time. We can tell fun stories and I can drool at him over a pint and wonder if he’d ever be up for being invited to a gang bang in the future. He should go out and fuck as many amazing people as will have him – I hope there’ll be plenty because he’s gives great dick and it would be utterly criminal for that to go to waste.

I’ll say all that aloud, and I will smile and smile and smile and picture the pasture until my battered heart is capable of accepting the actual reality. Until I can genuinely work my way to a place where I am happy for him – a place I’ve managed to reach with so many other men in the comfortably-distant past.

I want my exes to be happy

I genuinely do want my ex-boyfriends to be happy. Even the awful ones. And the best way to get to this place is to focus on making myself happy rather than looking over someone else’s shoulder. Because every second I’m not dreaming of that pasture, I too have the audacity to fill up a life of my own – with amazing friends and a cool job and epic wanks and plenty of excellent fun with new and awesome people. I also – and I know this will sting for the majority of my lovely exes – get older, wiser, and therefore hotter with each year that passes. I stand by my decisions and I don’t regret my break-ups – each one happened for good reasons, and even the two hardest ones both make me sigh with relief that I managed to extricate myself from unhappy situations. I may be human and therefore prone to self-pity and weakness, but it’s remiss of me not to acknowledge that I really love my life.

If I didn’t want my ex-boyfriends to live well after me, then I’d have to accept that I am something of a curse. My love is poison, and after you’ve tasted it you’ll wither and shrivel into blandness and mediocrity. So although my pathetic heart might kneejerk to fantasies of a mansion filled with wistful, weepy exes, my rational brain wants more for them than that. It reflects far better on me and brings me way more joy if my ex-boyfriends go on to live awesome lives. Just as I’ve learned fun stuff from each of the men I have loved, so they’ll also (I hope) walk away from relationships with me carrying party bags full of new sex tricks and ideas and confidence and fond memories – none of which should ever go to waste. There is no pasture, there are no Playstations, but there’s a huge pool of kickass women and a hell of a lot of life to explore, and even in my most insecure moments I wouldn’t wish away those opportunities for any man I used to love.

So go on, you pasture-dodging fucks: go have fun. It will hurt and hurt, as I expect it’ll hurt you a bit to see me having fun without you. But eventually it’ll hurt a bit less for both of us. And then less. And less. Until one day it hardly hurts at all. Then if we catch up when the hurt has dwindled, we can swap stories and reminisce about old times and I’ll ask you about your cool new person. What’s her name? What does she do? Does she have any awesome tattoos? And above all: do you think she’d mind if one day I borrowed you for a gang bang?